ProetryPlace Blog 31 Soldiering and Such
Part 5: Reporting for Duty
Four weeks later, I reported at an obscure Army Chemical Depot in the French countryside and replaced the crossed rifles of my infantry lapel insignia with crossed retorts—douche bags in GI vernacular—of the US Chemical Corps.
My journey to this place that would be home for the next year and a half started with a flight crowded with 20-some other passengers in a rumbling DC-3 from Billy Mitchell Field in Milwaukee into LaGuardia in New York City. Commercial jet flights and jumbo aircraft were still in the future, and my first flight experience on this model-T of air travel was a mixture of excitement and white-knuckle uncertainty as we seemed to bounce precariously on every slight atmospheric disturbance.
In New York, the troop ship departure for Europe was delayed. I received a pass and orders to report back for boarding late the next day. After four months of boot-camp discipline, this unexpected freedom was almost too much to handle, and my Midwestern naiveté provided little guidance for explorations of the biggest city on the continent.
I walked and gawked almost aimlessly through the canyons of Manhattan craning my neck skyward and dodging apparel carts. Near Times Square I was tempted by strip-joint hawkers but too impecunious to yield. By chance, I found myself in Rockefeller Center, awed to meet Prometheus face to golden face. At the nearby Radio City Music Hall, the Rockettes lifted their perfectly shaped legs in a long line of perfectly coordinated kicks, as disciplined as any marching unit I had ever seen and a hell of a lot prettier.
I scanned the city from the Empire State Building observation deck. I ate Nathan’s hotdogs washed down with Nehi orange soda. I wandered through Central Park decked out in spring green. Finally, as dusk began to settle, I realized that I needed a meal and a place to sleep that night. Hotels were out of the question, but my per-diem stipend allowed me to stay overnight at one of the city’s finer YMCAs.
“How much?”
“Seven dollars with your own bathroom.”
The room was as tiny and sparse as a monk’s cloister. But the sheets were crisp and clean, covered with one thin blanket. The location was good, and the price was right-on. Moreover, the “Y” sponsored a USO dance with live music that night, local girls in attendance and, more importantly, free food.
A small printed note on the small bed announced: Music, Dancing, Refreshments, 7 - 10 PM. It was already after 7. I did a quick wash up, took an extra minute to comb my hair and found my way to the hall where the festivities were already underway. Along one wall a group of young girls congregated, chatting amongst themselves and paying more attention to the guitar player in the small musical group than to the dozen or so GIs facing them from the opposite wall.
“The girls don’t look very friendly,” I observed as one well-endowed, dark-haired beauty glanced across the room with eyes that seemed to challenge rather than invite.
“Their mamas probably made them come,” one of the GIs responded, “but the mamas are nice and have some great sandwiches at that table down at the end.”
I chose a fat ham sandwich and Pepsi with a chocolate-frosted donut for desert and smiled gratefully. “Where are you from?” one lady asked. When I replied, “Wisconsin,” she looked as blank as if I had said Tasmania or Liechtenstein. Few New Yorkers are aware of anything further west than Niagara Falls.
I watched one or two couples venture onto the dance floor to jitterbug. Not my dance. I thought about college dances with Dolly. Then back to my monk’s bed for my last sleep in the USA for months.
The weeklong Atlantic passage was not as unpleasant as it was boring. I met a few fellow recruits from Atterbury. We whiled the time away with lengthy games of cards or chess and speculations on our future assignments. I took a semester of Spanish in college; are there army bases in Spain?
Even a day of K-P in the ship’s immense galley was a welcome diversion. Cases of eggs lined one wall, to be cracked and deposited into huge cauldrons and stirred with large wooden paddles for scrambled eggs. I had never seen “fresh” eggs this old. The dates on many of the cases were nearly prehistoric. Now and then an undeveloped embryo or even a sparsely feathered chick found its way from a cracked egg into the heavy stainless steel pot, sinking out of reach before it could be retrieved.
“Eggs?” In the chow line the next morning the navy cook held out a loaded spoonful of the scrambled variety. Breakfast had been my favorite meal until then. “No thanks, toast and bacon will do for me today. Anything strange in the oatmeal?”
We arrived at last at the port of Bremerhaven, Germany and hosteled overnight in magnificent two-story caserns with terrazzo floors, former German Army barracks. These people knew how to do things. How had they lost the war?
We waited again while the army worked its mysterious ways of sorting out and dispersing the many hundreds of new arrivals to our European assignments. At last it was determined that my two years of college chemistry made me a fine candidate for the Chemical Corp and assignment in France. There seemed to be some actual logic at work here. So far so good it seemed.
After a bus ride to Verdun the winnowing continued. I found myself in the back of a two and a half ton army truck with two others—privates Bliss and Smith. We bounced through the beautiful French countryside on a narrow highway lined with stately poplar trees, though our mode of transportation offered little view except in hind sight.
Private Bliss offered a hand. “Marty,” he said, “Brooklyn, New York.”
Smith and I in turn offered similar brief introductions. Sporadic conversation emerged between private thoughts as we sized up each other, offered brief glimpses of our homes and families and mused quietly about what our destination might be like. Some 45 kilometers and 90 minutes later, we rumbled past a collection of old, white, stone buildings bordering the narrow road and arrived at the barred gates of Sampigny Chemical Depot.
No stately caserns here. Inside the gates, we looked out on a dozen or more dark canvas, eight-man tents standing in rows along two unpaved roads. A light breeze stirred up a dust devil on the road as we reported in at the company headquarters tent for assignment.
“Privates-first class Smith, Bliss and Anderson reporting for duty.”
(To be continued)
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